The Man With Two Left Feet

ashamed of me. The study was something terrible. I had to watch myself every minute for years, and I never knew when I might fluff my lines or fall down on some bit of business. But I did it, because I didn't want him to be ashamed of me, though all the time I was just aching to be back where I belonged.'
    Old Danby made a jump at her, and took her by the shoulders.
    'Come back where you belong, Julie!' he cried. 'Your husband's dead, your son's a pro. Come back! It's twenty–five years ago, but I haven't changed. I want you still. I've always wanted you. You've got to come back, kid, where you belong.'
    Aunt Julia gave a sort of gulp and looked at him.
    'Joe!' she said in a kind of whisper.
    'You're here, kid,' said Old Danby, huskily. 'You've come back… Twenty–five years!… You've come back and you're going to stay!'
    She pitched forward into his arms, and he caught her.
    'Oh, Joe! Joe! Joe!' she said. 'Hold me. Don't let me go. Take care of me.'
    And I edged for the door and slipped from the room. I felt weak. The old bean will stand a certain amount, but this was too much. I groped my way out into the street and wailed for a taxi.
    Gussie called on me at the hotel that night. He curveted into the room as if he had bought it and the rest of the city.
    'Bertie,' he said, 'I feel as if I were dreaming.'
    'I wish I could feel like that, old top,' I said, and I took another glance at a cable that had arrived half an hour ago from Aunt Agatha. I had been looking at it at intervals ever since.
    'Ray and I got back to her flat this evening. Who do you think was there? The mater! She was sitting hand in hand with old Danby.'
    'Yes?'
    'He was sitting hand in hand with her.'
    'Really?'
    'They are going to be married.'
    'Exactly.'
    'Ray and I are going to be married.'
    'I suppose so.'
    'Bertie, old man, I feel immense. I look round me, and everything seems to be absolutely corking. The change in the mater is marvellous. She is twenty–five years younger. She and old Danby are talking of reviving "Fun in a Tea–Shop", and going out on the road with it.'
    I got up.
    'Gussie, old top,' I said, 'leave me for a while. I would be alone. I think I've got brain fever or something.'
    'Sorry, old man; perhaps New York doesn't agree with you. When do you expect to go back to England?'
    I looked again at Aunt Agatha's cable.
    'With luck,' I said, 'in about ten years.'
    When he was gone I took up the cable and read it again.
    'What is happening?' it read. 'Shall I come over?'
    I sucked a pencil for a while, and then I wrote the reply.
    It was not an easy cable to word, but I managed it.
    'No,' I wrote, 'stay where you are. Profession overcrowded.'

WILTON'S HOLIDAY
    When Jack Wilton first came to Marois Bay, none of us dreamed that he was a man with a hidden sorrow in his life. There was something about the man which made the idea absurd, or would have made it absurd if he himself had not been the authority for the story. He looked so thoroughly pleased with life and with himself. He was one of those men whom you instinctively label in your mind as 'strong'. He was so healthy, so fit, and had such a confident, yet sympathetic, look about him that you felt directly you saw him that here was the one person you would have selected as the recipient of that hard–luck story of yours. You felt that his kindly strength would have been something to lean on.
    As a matter of fact, it was by trying to lean on it that Spencer Clay got hold of the facts of the case; and when young Clay got hold of anything, Marois Bay at large had it hot and fresh a few hours later; for Spencer was one of those slack–jawed youths who are constitutionally incapable of preserving a secret.
    Within two hours, then, of Clay's chat with Wilton, everyone in the place knew that, jolly and hearty as the new–comer might seem, there was that gnawing at his heart which made his outward cheeriness simply heroic.
    Clay, it seems, who is the worst specimen of self–pitier, had gone to Wilton, in whom, as a new–comer, he naturally saw a fine fresh repository for his tales of woe, and had opened with a long yarn of some misfortune or other. I forget which it was; it might have been any one of a dozen or so which he had constantly in stock, and it is immaterial which it was. The point is that, having heard him out very politely and patiently, Wilton came back at him with a story which silenced even Clay. Spencer was equal to most things, but even he could not go on